Peaky Blinders, a gritty crime drama set in Birmingham, shows a wide range of crimes and misbehaviors, but modern eyes can still be shocked by the way the gangsters casually toss their cigarette butts on the ground. In 21st century America, that’s not acceptable behavior. Our societal rejection of the habit has had some positive outcomes: 90 percent fewer smoking-related fires, for example. Yet 75% of smokers still throw their butts on the ground.
This litter is not just unsightly. Those cigarette butts are toxic. And they make up 20% of all litter, with almost 10 million hitting the ground each year, 4 million in waterways.
In the U.S., adult smoking has fallen to 8%. In Italy, it’s 19.7%. So it may not be surprising that Italian roboticist are the ones who came up with VERO (Vacuum-cleaner Equipped RObot), a quadruped robot that can identify and vacuum up cigarette butts from a variety of terrains.
The robot is a familiar dog-type like Spot. It has a vacuum cleaner mounted on its back, with hoses attached to each of its four feet. Each hose has a 3-D printed nozzle, but the robot and the vacuum are off the shelf items. Two cameras allow VERO to see and identify cigarette butts. Once it sees its quarry, it toddles over to the butt and vacuums it up with the nearest foot-anchored vacuum hose.
Where a Roomba type of robo-vac would have to slurp up all the items in its way and therefore would not last very long on the beach, VERO can recognize cigarette butts among the pebbles on a beach and single them out for disposal.
How does it work?
AI is key to VERO’s operation. Cigarette butts are similar to one another but not identical, and they are also similar to plenty of other objects. Capturing. general image of the area it has been tasked with cleaning up is the first step, and VERO must also recognize each of the cigarette butts without being misled by duplicates. Once it has an overview of the situation, it calculates the best path to take to clean up all the butts.
The calculations have to include placement of the robot’s feet to vacuum up the butts while at the same time providing itself with a stable stance. The makers, the Dynamic Legged Systems lab at IIT Genova, have found that legged robots are better able to navigate difficult terrains. With their work on perception and manipulation, they are creating robots that can not only clean up cigarette butts but also prune vineyards and a range of other tasks.
Does it threaten jobs?
We often think in terms of whether a robot can do a job as well as a human and whether any human workers might be displaced by the robot. In this case, it looks like both questions would get negative answers. VERO can get 90% of the cigarette butts in tests. Humans could probably improve on that, and they certainly could do it faster. However, picking up cigarette butts is bound to be an unappealing job. However slowly VERO does it, it can work unsupervised and free up human workers for more satisfying work.
When your industrial robots rely on Indramat drive and control systems to get their work done, you need Indramat specialists to provide the service and support they require. Call (479) 422-0390 for immediate assistance.